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Ticker: Outdoor dining kicks off in Boston; Healey names Will Rasky to DC post

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

One day into the start of the outdoor dining season in Boston, the list of restaurant applicants is continuing to grow, Mayor Michelle Wu said Tuesday afternoon.The city has approved 26 new applications to start outdoor dining programs this season, Wu said. Eleven more are in the final stage of approval, and 50 are in review.The kick-off of the season this year has been different than previous years, with accessibility and other requirement leniencies under the pandemic no longer in effect and outdoor dining now largely banned in the North End.The city is continuing to take applications on a rolling basis with no cutoff date, Wu said, and has streamlined the process “in a very significant way” to keep applications moving.The number of applications continues to grow at a fast pace, the mayor said, with 25 of the applications under review submitted in the last few days.The city already has over 300 outdoor dining locations mapped on its website.Healey names Will Rasky to D...

Four Boston school students ate pot edibles, taken to hospital

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

Four students from the Henderson Inclusion School were hospitalized for eating pot-infused edibles, Boston school officials said.Dr. William H. Henderson Head of School Stephanie Sibley said in a letter to families that the middle-school students “ingested what appeared to be a cannabis-infused chocolate edible,” on Tuesday.“School staff immediately notified BPS safety services and Boston Police of the incident,” Sibley wrote. “The families of all students involved were immediately notified and the students were seen by the school nurse.“Boston EMS was also notified of the incident, and the students were taken to a local hospital for further medical care. An investigation into this incident is ongoing.”Boston Police spokesman Sgt. Det. John Boyle said the students, three females and a male, “ingested some potato chips of THC and a chocolate bar which contained THC.”The students’ medical condition was described as non-life-threatening by police, who responded to Henderson’s upper sch...

Board of Supervisors vote to support special election to fill Fletcher's seat

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to support a special election to fill Supervisor Nathan Fletcher's seat once he resigns.When the board meets again in three weeks, they will vote on the newly created resolution to hold a special election on Aug. 15.Fletcher plans to step down from his District 4 seat on May 15. He is currently out on a medical leave being treated for what he says is alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress.Since that announcement, there have been many developments involving the supervisor and his leadership position. Days after he announced he was checking himself into treatment, a former MTS employee, Grecia Figueroa, filed a lawsuit accusing Fletcher of sexual harassment and assault in his role as then-chairman of MTS. Timeline: Unfolding of the Nathan Fletcher scandal "Holding a special election ensures that San Diego County residents can choose their representatives fairly and transparently," Supervisor Jim Desmond said in a ...

Navy commander pulled from job in connection with SEAL death

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The commander of the Naval Special Warfare Center who was reprimanded in connection with the death last year of a Navy SEAL candidate has been pulled out of his job about two months early, U.S. officials said Tuesday.Navy Capt. Brian Drechsler is being moved to another job as Navy officials seek new leadership for the Center, more than a year after SEAL candidate Kyle Mullen collapsed and died of acute pneumonia just hours after completing the grueling Hell Week test.Drechsler was one of three Navy officers who received administrative “non-punitive” letters as a result of Mullen's death. They were not directly blamed for his death and Drechsler has not been formally relieved of duty, although such an investigation is likely a career-ender. His transfer is the first step in an ongoing review to determine if any additional punishment is warranted. Officials said Drechsler will be serving as a special assistant at Naval Special Warfare Command, and had been planning t...

Sheriff's Department searching for robbery suspects in Lemon Grove

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

LEMON GROVE, Calif. — The San Diego County Sheriff's Department said Tuesday that they were looking for a trio of robbery suspects in Lemon Grove.A department helicopter was overhead in the area near the 7300 block of Central Avenue, officials said in a tweet just after 2 p.m.The robbery was first reported shortly before 1:30 p.m. when the three suspects reportedly entered a home in the area, a sheriff's Watch Commander told FOX 5.A woman was home alone at the time, but her husband came home and intercepted the suspects, who proceeded to flee the scene, SDSO said.None of the suspects are currently in custody and one of the suspects may have had a knife, according to the sheriff's department. Woman hospitalized after being shot in Barrio Logan The three suspects were described by officials as the following:An 18-year-old Black man wearing a black hat with gold writing and a purple Adidas hoodie that says LAA 17-year-old Hispanic male wearing a gray hoodie and black or dark pantsA B...

Woman testifies that she too was sexually attacked by Trump

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A woman testified Tuesday that Donald Trump molested her with what seemed like “40 zillion hands” on an airline flight in the late 1970s — years before writer E. Jean Carroll says the former president sexually assaulted her at a Manhattan department store.Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyer said the former president has decided against testifying, answering the biggest outstanding question about the closely watched case. Trump has given sworn deposition testimony, and excerpts could be played for the jury.Jessica Leeds, 81, of Asheville, North Carolina, told jurors at a civil trial arising from Carroll’s lawsuit that Trump grabbed her chest and ran his hand up her skirt as they sat side by side in first class on a New York City-bound jet. After a few seconds, she said, she wriggled free of Trump, told him “I don’t need this” and stormed to the back of the plane.“There was no conversation. It was like out of the blue. It was like a tussle,” Leeds testifi...

Muslim mayor blocked from White House decries “watch list”

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

A New Jersey mayor who was blocked from attending a White House celebration this week with President Joe Biden to belatedly mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan called Tuesday for the administration to end the federal “watch list” that he said illegally targets Muslims and others.During a news conference held Tuesday in South Plainfield by the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NJ), Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah and several other speakers condemned the list as illegal, discriminatory and unconstitutional. They also called on the U.S. Secret Service and other federal agencies to stop using and distributing the list, which the group says has more than 1.5 million names, a majority of which are “Arab or Muslim sounding.”CAIR has called on the Biden administration to cease the FBI’s dissemination of information from what is known as a Terrorist Screening Data Set that includes hundreds of thousands of individuals. The group informe...

Officials: US to send Ukraine $300 million in military aid

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is sending Ukraine about $300 million in additional military aid, including an enormous amount of artillery rounds, howitzers, air-to-ground rockets and ammunition as the launch of a spring offensive against Russian forces approaches, U.S. officials said Tuesday.The new package includes Hydra-70 rockets, which are unguided rockets that are fired from aircraft. It also includes an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, mortars, howitzer rounds, missiles and Carl Gustaf anti—tank rifles. The weapons will all be pulled from Pentagon stocks, so they can go quickly to the front lines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been formally announced.The latest shipment comes as Ukrainian officials say they are readying a counteroffensive — with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov declaring they are in the “home stretch, when we can say: ‘Yes everything is ready.’” Ukrainia...

Close call at high speed: video shows officer evade crash

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A police officer remarkably escaped injury Monday when a car careened across a highway at 120 mph while he conducted a traffic stop.Dashcam video of the crash released Tuesday by Fairfax County Police shows a black BMW sedan driven by a teenager coming within inches of the officer, who had stepped out of his patrol car to pull over a gray BMW for speeding. In the seconds before the crash, the black BMW can be seen skidding across a median on the Fairfax County Parkway near Braddock Road. It then strikes the car that had been pulled over and ricochets into the patrol car. The officer falls to the ground for a second, then quickly pops up to radio for help and check on injuries.Miraculously, no major injuries were reported, even though the black BMW had two teenage passengers in addition to the driver. All three in the black BMW were wearing seatbelts, police said. The driver of the black BMW was charged with reckless driving, a misdemeanor that can often result in...

Verdict reached in 'ComEd Four' bribery trial

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:57:57 GMT

CHICAGO -- After several days of deliberations, jurors have reached a verdict in the "ComEd Four" bribery trial.WGN-TV will update the story once the verdict has been announced. Watch WGN News at 5 in the video player above as we wait for the trial verdict. A former prosecutor said federal lawyers would start worrying about a mistrial in the "ComEd Four" bribery trial if jury deliberations stretched into a second week.The “ComEd Four” on trial are former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s confidant Michael McClain, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and former ComEd consultant Jay Doherty. All have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including bribery conspiracy.Potential jail time and fines for the “ComEd Four,” includes a guilty conspiracy verdict on Count 1 could lead to a maximum  $250,000 fine or 5 years imprisonment or both, according to the US Attorney’s office. Pritzker...